Inspired By The Ideas Of Werner Erhard

And More

Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA

October 15, 2002

Everyone knows
transformation
has a dramatic impact on health, as well as on our ability to create
and generate health.

Are there any rules that go with
transformation
which manage and define health? Are there instances when
transformation
supersedes prescription medication? Should there be?

While we may not be doctors, we can
createtransformation.
The work is distinct. You and I, and only you and I, are responsible
for our own physical well-being.

Having said all that like a proviso (in order to lay down a base from
which to speak further), I'm not promising sickness and ill-health
(whatever their manifestations) will disappear out of bringing
transformation
to bear on them. However, I am saying you can invent the possibility
of sickness and ill-health disappearing out of bringing
transformation
to bear on them. Yes, we are talking about miracles here.

And when you contemplate - as many of us have done - how one patient
can be completely miserable in the face of sickness while the next
patient can be completely at peace with and
fully alive
in the face of sickness, you realize what can certainly be disappeared,
if not sickness itself, are the rackets we have about
sickness itself.

In my life, before I experienced
Werner's work,
I was what you would call
accident
prone. Something was always happening with or to my body. I often
caught colds, and there was always
something
wrong
in my physical well being. I fell off my bike. I broke my nose. I split
my forehead with my surfboard ... you know, that sort of thing.

I started
observing
the condition in which I lived with regard to my own health as if I was
the cause of it, even if I didn't really get that totally, and what I
saw while looking at it that way was very interesting.

My father Asher Manfred
was a general practitioner, a family doctor. He always provided the
very best in patient care, and he loved taking care of people when they
were sick. So I started a racket by making myself sick or getting hurt
as a great way for me to get his love and attention.

Uncovering that I did that was a breakthrough for me. From then on, I
cut that out. If I wanted his love and attention from then on, I simply
asked him for it.

I completely
transformed
my physical health. The spate of physical injuries ceased, and today I
don't even own a handkerchief.

Now: am I saying that someone who has AIDS will disappear it simply by
bringing
transformation
to bear on it?

Here's what I am saying:

Any racket associated with having AIDS has the possibility of
disappearing. Andrew Beckett, the Tom Hanks character dying of AIDS
in the movie Philadelphia was outright inspiring;

Having AIDS and taking responsibility for having AIDS presents a
whole new vista from having AIDS and not taking
responsibility for having AIDS (AIDS is merely a euphemism here - I'm
actually speaking about any sickness);

Yes, there is the possibility of AIDS disappearing - and I say that
like a possibility, not like a promise. People disappear cancer.
Mother Teresa
is about to be beatified because people disappeared cancer around
her. Yes it happens!

For serious matters of health, it's prudent to refer to a doctor. But
if you take it on by yourself and look for the responsibility in
whatever is going on with you and your body,
transformation
is the possibility of miracles, including miracles of physical healing.

You and I have the ability to
transform
our experience of any physical condition. No, I'm not saying we can
raise the dead, and of course no, I'm not saying
transformation
will make you physically immortal. What I'm saying is simply you and I
have the possibility of
transforming
our experience of physicality and whatever
goeswith it (as
Alan Watts
may have said).

This is what there is to take on. This is the realm of the miraculous.